How is John Podesta going to present both sides of the debate while recusing himself on a debate he believes should not exist?

The appointment of John Podesta as a senior counsellor to President Obama looks like more bad news for the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. Mr. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is the founder of the left-liberal Center for American Progress, CAP, where he has promoted climate alarmism. He has also been a key advisor to Tom Steyer, the politically ambitious billionaire who recently mounted a rabid campaign against Keystone XL. Mr. Podesta has reportedly urged Mr. Steyer to spend his money forcing politicians to pay a price for being what he called “weasels” on climate.

The White House has claimed that Mr. Podesta, who has accused President Obama of being “oil and gas friendly,” might “recuse himself” from Keystone discussions. Equally implausible was the entirely contradictory statement from Daniel J, Weiss, director of climate strategy for CAP, that although Mr. Podesta was an opponent of Keystone, he was also going to be an “honest broker” and “make sure that the president hears both sides of the debate.”

The problem – apart from how Mr. Podesta is going to present both sides of the debate while recusing himself – is that he doesn’t believe that there should be a debate. The science is settled, so the policy should follow. Green groups announced they were “thrilled” with the appointment, and started pressing Mr. Podesta not to hold back on his views.

His appointment confirms how important the Keystone decision is in the run up to the 2014 mid-term elections. On the one hand, Republicans will point to a nixing of Keystone as further evidence that the President places green ideology above jobs. If he approves Keystone, however, he will come under mighty attack from ENGOs who have done a skilful job of exaggerating the risks of the pipeline, and its significance for the climate.

On Thursday the American Petroleum Institute released a poll purporting to demonstrate that 72% of respondents agreed that Keystone was in the U.S. national interest, while 63% wanted the U.S. to import more oil from Canada “rather than other foreign countries.” These numbers would seem to support approval. However, Mr. Podesta’s appointment points firmly in the opposite direction.

Almost two years ago, Messrs Steyer and Podesta wrote a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal stating “While conservatives have been fighting to build a pipeline to import more foreign oil and deepen U.S. dependence, the U.S. is poised to transform its energy portfolio by developing domestic resources — renewable and mineral — that will let it become a net exporter of clean energy and energy technology in this decade.”

No doubt they are still trying to link oil with “conservatives,” but their projection of a clean energy bonanza is looking a little shaky. They boasted in January, 2012 that America had just wrested back the title of the largest clean energy investor from China. Now that Chinese clean energy is in crisis, that doesn’t look like such a proud boast. But if there’s one thing that green ideology promotes, its imperviousness to inconvenient truths.

More recently, Mr. Steyer has been behind a series of anti-Keystone XL TV adds, including one that had an actor playing Russ Girling, the CEO of TransCanada Corp., as an oil-soaked caricature of corporate deviousness. He has also made wildly inaccurate claims that Keystone XL (whose southern portion has just gone into operation) would enable the oil sands to be developed three times more quickly, and would “dramatically” increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The only thing that Keystone XL really has going for it is the facts. The State Department is currently going through yet another environmental assessment. It has already given Keystone a clean bill of environmental health twice, but other government agencies, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, which better reflect the President’s radical green sentiments, refuse to take yes for an answer.

When the State Department suggested that turning down Keystone XL would have no environmental impact because the oil would find its way to market by other routes, the EPA objected that was not the case, and indeed they had a point. To the extent that oil sands oil is forced to follow other, more expensive routes to market, primarily rail and road, development will be retarded. The irony is that other routes are more emissions intensive.

The main point however, is that the grounds on which Keystone is being held up — its impact on the climate — doesn’t appear to make much sense unless you understand that it is part of a much larger struggle for “sustainable” control of the economic agenda.

That is obvious from the slithery semantics of the issue. The President has said that he would only approve Keystone XL if it does not “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” But carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and is only a global problem if models projecting catastrophe are correct, which, according to recent peer-reviewed studies, they are not.

Mr. Podesta suggested even before the Obamacare debacle that the deterioration of the president’s legislative agenda and the growing strength of the pipeline movement meant that the pipeline was “a fifty-fifty proposition.” Whether that was accurate or not, with Mr. Podesta in the White House, Keystone XL’s chances of approval suddenly appeared to get worse.

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